Electronic Arts Games Will Continue To Appear On Steam

On an investor conference call yesterday, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello touted the wonders of EA's new download service, Origin, pointing out the obvious fact that the margins (the amount of money EA makes) on each game sale are 100 percent if the games are sold on Origin. But, contrary to some recent narratives in the gaming space, Riccitiello made it clear that EA games would continue to appear on Steam and other download services.

"We are pushing EA content on any and every platform we can," Riccitiello said. "We love what we're getting with Origin, but we are very keen to get our content distributed anywhere where gamers are."

This is not to say that every EA game will always appear on Steam. Case-in-point: Dragon Age 2. The game has apparently been pulled from Steam. A quick check of their catalog reveals that the game is gone from the site -- at least for now -- although the reason seems to not be a conflict with Origin.

According to Destructoid's sources, the game being pulled may be directly connected to the just-launched "Legacy" downloadable content.

From Destructoid:

"Our sources indicate that EA was offering the content by way of an in-game store, which may be a violation of the latest version of Steam's terms of service. If this is the case, EA and BioWare would have had to re-write parts of the game software just for Steam, simply to conform with Valve's standards. It's possible that EA's refusal to do so may have led to Valve yanking the title entirely."

I've contacted EA, so hopefully I'll get a little more information on this soon, and then I'll update.